


How We Survive

by mad_mary_kidd (madmarykidd)



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Casual Sex, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Recreational Drug Use, check notes at beginning before reading please!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:20:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25458436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madmarykidd/pseuds/mad_mary_kidd
Summary: Just how did Felix come by his anarcho-communist views anyway? A little exploration of one possible (likely?) avenue. I'm probably giving him too much credit.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	1. Somewhere between happy

**Author's Note:**

> Prostitution implied (pretty clearly) but not shown, in chapter 2. There is implied (but again, not shown) sexual activity in chapter 1, consensual and non-coercive; there is also mention of drug use. These themes are not for everyone, so I am not offended if you click out before reading. Please do, if you think that reading this will be uncomfortable for you! 
> 
> All that said, I have done my best but if there are tags that I should be using that I haven't, please message me and I will tag accordingly. Stay safe, never read anything that makes you feel uncomfortable <3 
> 
> I think Felix would really like Rise Against.

Maybe he’ll be lucky enough tonight that Clyde will be asleep by the time he returns, Felix thinks without much hope, as he slinks back to the room he shares with his friend. Maybe he’ll avoid another lecture. 

‘Room’ is far too generous a description for the little walled off space in the larger hangar of the Back Bays, but it’s home. When he’s not at work, or in Jack’s bed. Or Amanita’s bed. Or - 

“Felix, is that you?”

Dammit. He should have known better than to hope for an evening’s peace. Clyde is on his bunk, and looks up from his copy of ‘In Praise of Arson’ with a frown as Felix comes around the corner. He keeps the book hidden under his mattress during the day; even in the Back Bays, someone could still rat you out for the right price. 

“Felix, when are you going to learn that there’s more to life than mushroom trips and fucking?” There’s no point pretending that Clyde doesn’t know exactly what he’s been doing; what he does most nights. 

“You’re right,” says Felix. “There’s work, too. Oh, and tossball.” He sits on his own bunk and leans back against the wall, closing his eyes and savouring the last few smears of colour that dance across his vision. Coming down was always the worst part of getting high, and landing in the middle of another one of Clyde’s lectures was usually the worst part of coming down. He’d have stayed where he was if he’d known; the only reason he put his clothes back on and dragged himself here, still tripping, was because he’d wanted to get gone before Jack’s roommate returned for the night. The guy is a Hammerheads fan, and he and Felix don’t see eye to eye. Least of all when one of them’s naked. 

“You still don’t get it, do you, hullhead?” says Clyde, folding his hands over the book and laying it in his lap. “Your whole life consists of those things because the Board _wants_ your life to consist of only those things. They want you to work until you’re too exhausted to think, until all you want is some relief from the constant, unending grind of it all. They even provide you with tossball matches to distract you. It’s all just opium to keep you asleep. Your sexual and narcotic escapades are just anaesthetic, too, a crutch you wouldn’t need if you would just wake up long enough to realise that all you have to do is fight back against their oppression. All you are to them is grease for the machine, Felix, and it pains me to see someone like you, who has so much potential, just _letting_ them waste it for you.” Clyde shakes his head. 

Felix leans over for the pack of cigarettes he’s hidden down the side of his own mattress. “I don’t see _you_ doing much about it,” he says. 

“ _I_ can’t,” says Clyde. “Not alone. But if enough of us were to band together, we really could free ourselves from corporate slavery at last. I’m telling you, Felix, stop numbing yourself to your pain and really _look_ to see what’s causing it.” He holds up the book for emphasis, gives it a shake. He’s been trying to get Felix to read it for months. 

Felix sighs, lights a cigarette. “Listen, mushrooms and tossball and fucking are the only things that make me feel anything good, so if you don’t mind I’m gonna keep doing them.” 

Clyde sighs. “I know you’re not happy, Felix. Nobody is. Come and talk to me when you decide you want to change that.” With that he tucks the book back under his mattress and turns over away from Felix. 

Felix lays back on his bed and smokes, staring up at the bulkhead and listening to the hum of the Groundbreaker’s engines. It’s the kind of constant, low level background noise that he doesn’t notice most of the time but if he finds himself listening to it, it starts to drive him crazy. But if it ever stopped… Felix can’t imagine how that would feel. 

Maybe Clyde’s right. The Groundbreaker itself might be mostly free of the Board’s reach on paper, but workers like himself? Back Bays rats are chained just as surely as any corporate slave. Chained, if nothing else, by the need to eat occasionally. Even MacRedd has to sell his shitty mushrooms to make a few bits. 

The last few wisps of colour fade from his vision, but even with them gone Felix can’t sleep. 

~*~

Felix wakes to find that Clyde has left for the day - realising with a start that this means that he himself is probably late for work, he scrambles up out of his bunk and is almost immediately brought short by a stab of pain in his guts. It’s not always that the mushrooms get him like this, but when they do it’s bad. Add to that the fact that he hasn’t eaten since yesterday morning, and the equation spells a bad day for Felix Millstone. Groaning and clutching his belly, he hobbles toward the elevator up to the main floor of the Groundbreaker. If he doesn’t find something to eat before he gets to work, he won’t make it until his ten minute lunch break before he passes out. He pulls the lever, and starts patting his pockets for bits. 

To his horror, he remembers much too late that he gave his last bit cart to MacRedd for the mushrooms last night, along with an IOU. The doors slide open to reveal the Promenade just as he comes to the realisation that if he wants breakfast, he’s going to have to steal it - and quick. His eyes slide over to the Sprat Wurst, and his stomach growls. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he keeps his head down as he saunters over, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. There are a few Mardets here and there, all taking their jobs about as seriously as they ever do; leaning on the railings, chatting, smoking. There are also a few Corporate troopers - unfortunately for Felix, one is approaching the Sprat Wurst himself from the other direction. _Shit_. He doesn’t have any time to waste waiting for the jackass to order, so he’ll just have to take his chances. 

There is a little basket with a few bags of Tileritos on the counter; perfect. All he has to do is wait for the trooper and Ethel to be facing the other way, and he can swipe one. Just as he is formulating this plan Ethel says his name, making him jump. 

“Felix,” she greets him. “Won’t be but a moment, dear.” _Shit_. Now she’s noticed him, which will make it harder to get away without ordering anything. He lifts a hand in greeting.

The trooper looks over his shoulder at Felix too, no more than a cursory glance but enough to see his face, and turns back to the board on the wall behind Ethel. “What’s Terra-fried?” he asks. Ethel launches into her explanation, and Felix sees his chance. He sidles up to the counter near the bags of Tileritos; if they’re both distracted enough he might still get away with it. Watching them carefully and waiting for a moment when they’re both facing away from him he reaches out and takes a bag - but he tries to snatch his hand back too quickly, and the bag rustles. The trooper’s head whips around, and with that Felix is caught red-handed. 

“Hey!” cries the trooper, and he _knows_ the best thing to do would be stay where he is - maybe pretend he was about to pay, forgot his bit cart - but that single word triggers a fight or flight response and before he knows he’s doing it, Felix is running. 

He’s lifted stuff before; he doesn’t know anyone in the Back Bays who hasn’t. But he’s never been in such desperate need or in such a desperate rush to get to work before he gets his pay docked, or worse, fired. The trooper’s hand clamps hard around his upper arm and it’s surprise as much as the force with which the trooper yanks on him that stops Felix in his tracks, his heart racing. 

“Let me go!” he cries, out of reflex alone, pulling as hard as he can to try and break free, but the trooper is much stronger than a skinny little Back Bays rat. Felix had thought he would be faster - has definitely run from troopers before - but hunger and the mushroom cramps must have slowed him more than he thought they would. 

“Come here, you little brat,” says the trooper in disgust, plucking the Tileritos from Felix’s other hand. “It’s the cells for you.” He drags Felix back the few steps to the Sprat Wurst and places the chips back in the basket. Ethel is wringing her hands, and Felix can’t bring himself to look at her. “Don’t worry ma’am,” says the trooper. “Just let me deal with this little thief and I’ll be back for that sprat wurst.” 

He’s going to get fired, Felix thinks as the trooper cuffs him, twisting his shoulder painfully as he does so. The panic is receding but in its place is a cold, sharp fear. He’s going to get fired, and then nobody will give him another job, and then he’ll be back to scrounging from the trash and going hungry more days than he eats and getting sick all the time. But worse than any of that is the thought of being in jail; he knows prisoners have to pay for their own food, and how he’s going to do that if he can’t earn any bits… It would almost be nice to be able to say that he doesn’t know how he’ll do it, but he’s uncomfortably sure that he does. 

“Name,” says Commandant Sanita, looking bored. Felix doesn’t want to give it, but the trooper shakes him hard and he’s already more scared than he’s ever been in his life, so his brain is too scattered to think of a fake one to give. 

“Felix. Millstone.” The Commandant nods as she writes it down in her neat hand on the page in front of her, indelible. 

“Crime?” She still hasn’t looked at him once. 

“Theft,” says the trooper. “Stole a bag of Tileritos from the Sprat Wurst.” The Commandant nods again, adding Felix’s crime to her paper. 

“Uh huh,” says the Commandant. “Alright, bring him in.” 

The trooper doesn’t let up on his iron grip at all until Felix is safely behind the door of his cell. He’ll be bruised when he looks, he can feel it. His guts are still gripping and he’s hungrier than he was when he woke, and nobody will explain to his boss where he is and even if they did he’d still be fired, and nobody is coming to help him. Nobody gives a shit about him at all. He keeps his chin high until the Commandant and the trooper have gone back to the front desk - he’s scared, but he still has _some_ pride, dammit - and then he sinks down to the floor, buries his face in his arms and cries. 


	2. And total fucking wreck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again: implied prostitution in this chapter, please don't read if this is an uncomfortable subject for you.

He barely sleeps at all the first night. There are a few other people in the cells around him, but none pay him any attention. Just another Back Bays brat in trouble. A Mardet comes through with a cart of food, Felix isn’t sure when because he’s lost all sense of time, at some point the following day. The other prisoners produce bit cartridges and have a few deducted in exchange for Cysty-bits, Lemon Slapps, fizzy tea and smokes. Felix’s stomach growls, much louder than yesterday. He stands after a few tries, as the Mardet approaches his cell. 

“What do you want?” he asks, not looking up at Felix. 

“I… I don’t have any bits,” says Felix and the Mardet shrugs, makes to walk away, but Felix calls after him. “Please! I’m so hungry. I’ll work for it,” he offers, but the Mardet only gives him a sour look. 

“Doing what?” he asks, still sounding bored, but now also mildly disgusted. “If you didn’t have any bits, you should have thought of that before you committed a crime.” With that he pushes the cart away. 

Felix is so hungry that his vision is starting to swim, so he sits down on the bunk and tries not to cry. 

He doesn’t even realise that he’s passed out until a noise wakes him; he sits up with a start to see another guy being pushed into the cell with him. 

“Yeah, yeah, fuck you too,” says the guy to the Mardet, his voice gravelly. He sounds more bored than anything else. He’s older than Felix, older than Clyde maybe even. Felix hasn’t seen him around the Back Bays but he’s dressed in clothes that clearly haven’t been washed in a good long while, and he smells so terrible that Felix has to swallow hard against the nausea that rises up the back of his throat. Must be a spacer from one of the cargo ships, who knows what he did to get himself in here though. There's a scar across one of his eyes. 

“What’s up, kid,” he says, leaning against the opposite wall as the Mardet retreats back to the front desk. Without waiting for a reply he pulls out a pack of Cosmic Smokes and offers Felix one. Felix just stares at him; he’s never been offered anything by a complete stranger. “You want one or not?” the spacer asks, shaking the pack at him. Felix recovers and accepts, watching him cautiously as he does so. 

“Thanks,” he says, and accepts the light as well. It tastes gross and makes the nausea worse, but after a moment the nicotine starts to take some of the sharpest edges off his hunger pains. His head is floating. 

“Name’s Craig,” says the spacer, and his voice sounds fuzzy now. “Hey, you okay?” 

“Just hungry,” Felix manages. “I don’t have any bits. They threw me in here yesterday and I can’t afford any food.” There is a silence after this; Felix’s eyes are closed in hopes that it will stop him passing out, and all he can do is wait. 

“That so, huh?” Craig asks at last. Felix doesn’t need to hear the predatory note in his voice, but he does; it brings with it as much relief as it does dread. He knows other people who got arrested with no bits, knows what they had to do to avoid starvation. 

“Yeah,” he says, opening his eyes and looking at Craig. “Hey, I don’t suppose…” he stops, bites his lip in part calculated teasing and part genuine fear and uncertainty.

Craig smiles a slow smile, and Felix has to swallow down the nausea again. “Maybe,” says Craig. “What are you gonna give me in return?” 

~*~

Felix wakes the next day to the sound of an officious voice speaking his name. He stares around blearily, catches sight of Craig still asleep in the bunk opposite and looks away quickly. Commandant Sanita is standing outside his cell looking impatient. He scrambles to his feet, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes, rubbing away the sleep. And the images. 

“You’re free to go,” says the Commandant, putting a key into the lock on the door, and for a few seconds Felix is too caught up in his misery to be able to comprehend what she’s saying. 

“Wh - But I…” He watches, dumbfounded, as she swings open the door. 

The Commandant raises an eyebrow. “You wanna stay?” she asks, and like a shot Felix is out of the cell without a second thought. His mouth still tastes like… Nanner Spank. Nanner Spank and nothing else, he decides, knowing as he does that he’ll never be able to drink it again. The Commandant leads him back out to the front desk, and Felix blinks in amazement to see Clyde standing there outside the security station. He gives Felix a thin smile. 

“Don’t get caught again, you hear?” says Commandant Sanita, pushing Felix toward the door. 

Felix is still too astonished to speak when he joins Clyde outside; his friend offers him a cigarette, and he gratefully accepts. 

“Did you get me out?” Felix asks after a moment. He knows as he says it that it is a stupid question - of course Clyde got him out. What he really means is, how and why did Clyde get him out. 

“Of course,” says Clyde. “I wasn’t about to let you rot down there. Now come on, hullhead, let’s get you out of here.” 

“Thank you,” says Felix as they walk toward the elevator down to the Back Bays, too wrung out to say anything else, and smokes his cigarette with a shaky hand. They ride the elevator down in silence, and Clyde ushers him over to his bunk and sits him down. Felix almost cries when Clyde pushes a cold Boarst Pocket into his hands, and drops his cigarette to eat it. Clyde picks it up before it can set his bunk alight, stubs it out carefully so that it can be re-lit later. 

“It took me a little while to scrape together enough bits to get you out,” says Clyde, watching Felix stuff his face. “I would have come for you yesterday but I had to pull in a few favours first.” 

Felix swallows his mouthful with some difficulty, and looks up at his friend. “Thank you,” he says again. “I don’t know what I would have…” he tails off, lowers the hand with the uneaten Boarst Pocket in it. Clyde watches his face carefully, and Felix knows that he knows. 

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Clyde asks gently, and Felix shakes his head, swallows against the tears that are threatening again. 

He sleeps most of the rest of the day, waking up around mid-afternoon to find that Clyde has left him a jug of Plain ’N Pure Water, another Boarst Pocket and a Knock You Out Bar next to his bunk. He gets up to retrieve them, and as he puts his hand over the Boarst Pocket he notices that the corner of Clyde’s book, ‘In Praise of Arson’, is sticking out from under the mattress. The book is shabby-looking and obviously well read; it’s been written and bound by hand, there being no sane publisher in the entire Halcyon colony who would touch such a book with a twenty-foot pole. 

Felix considers for a moment, uncertain, but finds himself stooping down to pull the book free. Clyde won’t mind - will probably even be glad. He brings it back to his bunk with the Boarst Pocket, thumbing it open as he sits down and begins to read. 

~*~

He wakes again later to find Clyde gently pulling the book from his grasp; he’d fallen asleep reading it, he realises. “Sorry,” he mumbles, but Clyde smiles as he sinks down onto his own bunk. 

“Glad you finally picked it up,” he says. “I’m just sorry it took a stint in the slammer to convince you to give it a try. What do you think?” 

Felix considers. “Well, I didn’t get very far,” he admits. He was tired, and he’s a slow reader at the best of times, and before he drifted off he found himself having to read several sentences more than once just to make a guess at their meaning. “But… the part about, uh…” He stops, frowns up at the ceiling. “Abolishing the wage system, and private ownership of the production of means. What does that mean?” 

“‘The means of production’,” Clyde corrects him gently with a smile. “Well, it depends on the context, but broadly, the ‘means of production’ refers to things like factories where food and other goods are made. The book calls for workers to rise up and seize the means of production for themselves, for everyone. We are entitled to what our labour produces. The bosses, the Board, are not entitled to any of what we make because they put no work into making it." Clyde stops himself before he can get going, and looks Felix over. "Look, it’s a big subject, and I can see that you’re tired. If you really want to know more about it, then I’ll tell you. But tomorrow. You need sleep after what you’ve been through these last few days.” 

What little Felix was able to parse out himself has left him aflame with curiosity so the idea of sleeping now, just when it’s getting interesting, is difficult to accept. “But I just haul boxes around,” he hears himself ask. “Or, I did, I guess. Does it mean that I should… own the _boxes_?” This doesn’t seem right, but Clyde nods. 

“In a way, yes. Your work contributed to getting the goods that were inside those boxes to the consumers. You did that, not the Board. If nobody did your job, the companies and the Board wouldn’t make any money. But you _do_ your job, along with everyone else in the production chain. And all any of you get for it is barely enough bits to feed yourselves, while the Board sit back doing nothing and raking in the money you make for them.” 

Felix is angry suddenly. “But that’s not fair!” To his surprise, Clyde smiles wryly. 

“No,” he says. “It isn’t.” 

**Epilogue: Is what makes us who we are**

It’s a few weeks before Felix finally reaches the end of the book - reading a passage here and there and getting Clyde to explain it in more detail, and smaller words. There is a lot, and though he understands it perfectly when Clyde breaks it down for him and the larger ideas and concepts stay, the smaller details get lost pretty quickly. But what Felix is left with is a deep hatred for the Board, and a sense that he and every other worker in the colony has been ripped off and kept down on purpose. He knows now what Clyde meant when he said that Felix had been numbing his own pain, blind to its cause. But he’s awake now, though what he means to do about it he isn’t quite sure. Even Clyde doesn’t seem able to outline any specifics. 

Eventually one of the engineers takes pity on him and gives him a job hauling machine parts around. It pays even worse than the docks but Felix doesn’t know if he could work there any more anyway, not wanting to be an instrument in his own oppression. At least here he’s working for the Groundbreaker, if indirectly. Finally, Miz. Tennyson herself finds out; at first Felix is certain he’s about to be fired again, but after a moment during which she gives him a long hard look, she finally nods. Felix breathes a sigh of relief, and swears he won’t let her down. She sure is nice, and Felix can definitely appreciate the fire with which she resists Board oversight. He makes a point of loitering on the steps of Udom Bedford’s office until the guards move him on. It feels good to resist in some concrete way, however small. 

He still follows his Rangers, still buys mushrooms when he can afford them, still plays musical beds with his friends. He doesn’t see why the Board should take any of that from him. He’s awake now, and angry, and giving up the only things that give him any joy isn’t going to do anything but make him more miserable. Some day, Felix decides, he’ll get off the Groundbreaker for good. Some day he’ll be his own man. Some day, he’ll find a way to stick it to the Board. When the revolution comes, Felix Millstone will be ready. 

A few weeks after he finishes the book, Clyde disappears. In his place, he leaves a brand new, hand-bound copy of ‘In Praise of Arson’. Felix tucks it down the side of his mattress along with his cigarettes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly this game is barely even a satire any more. The jokes about capitalism just don't land the way they did before covid. Anyway, so I was thinking about the book you find in Felix's room on the Unreliable, and how the notes say that it looks like it's never been opened. Strange, for someone who seems to have such definite opinions; they must have come from somewhere. I'm probably being pretentious, but this wouldn't let me rest until I wrote it so I hope someone gets some enjoyment out of it!


End file.
